Question

Apologies if what I am going to ask is too generic and please feel free to mark it as community wiki or even close it but after getting a good answer please.. Here goes nothing.

I had a heated debate over the term application infrastructure with a consultant from a BIG company and hence I am here to see what the experts think as I myself need a good understanding as well. I am a puny software developer and was trying to have a chat about software architecture and stuff and then we kinda got stuck up at the term application infrastructure.

As per my rival’s understanding, this is solely used re the back-end hardware components and whereas I thought he is mixing the contexts and from the context of software eng it should refer to stuff that supports the application such as logging, ORM, or even framework (.net) etc.

To what extent am I wrong and if I am please shed some light on the definition…it’s really gonna help a lot.

Thanks

Answer 1

Here are a few links with a little description about the term Application Infrastructure extracted from them:

• Application Infrastructure — f5.com

  Application infrastructure, comprised of application servers, web servers, and often database servers, is a core component in most network architectures. This part of the network infrastructure delivers high performance application services to the LAN as well as to employees, partners and customers on the WAN.

  Some of the key functionality of application infrastructure includes transaction management, clustering, reliable application-to-application messaging, system management, advanced application development tools, proprietary access, and interoperability with legacy technologies.

• Application Infrastructure — networkmagazineindia.com

  A (common/standard) platform is required to make different applications in an enterprise work across geographies or multiple locations, and to manage a large number of users and transactions taking place within an enterprise. This platform which ensures that different applications work with each other, is known as an application infrastructure.

• Application Infrastructure — bitpipe.com

  A high performance, reliable, and secure integrated technology infrastructure for managing multiple hosted applications by Application Service Providers.